


Coals Aglow

by imogenbynight



Series: Coda Fic [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Gentle Dom Castiel, Getting Together, Grace Sex, M/M, Post-Episode: s13e21 Beat the Devil, The Fabled Dirty Apocalypse World Sex Fic, a little bit of praise kink, because Dean Winchester deserves nice things, coda fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:36:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28706037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imogenbynight/pseuds/imogenbynight
Summary: "I’m tired, and I don’t— I don’t see the point in ignoring this anymore. I haven’t really seen the point in a while. Didn’t want to rock the boat, I guess, but now…”“But now you’re tired.”“Yeah.”“So you’re rocking the boat.”Dean doesn’t respond to the question directly; just looks at Castiel with a determination in his eyes that leaves no room for misunderstanding, and says, “I’m going to bed. You should come with me.”
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Coda Fic [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/246598
Comments: 136
Kudos: 670





	Coals Aglow

{i}

It’s been several hours since the rebels split off into groups—half retiring to their sleeping quarters while the others walked with purpose to keep sentry around the camp’s perimeter—and Castiel has made a point to visit every one, speaking with each of them until he understands as much of this place as he possibly can. Just in case.

Castiel supposes that he could have just asked Jack, but despite Sam’s unexpected return he’s been quiet all evening. Almost withdrawn. It makes sense, considering how Sam came to be here and who he’d been forced to bring with him, but it still makes Castiel uneasy. Even after all these years, after his slip-slide into feeling, the emotional discomfort is something he’s not quite accustomed to.

Close to one in the morning, he spots Dean sitting on a log by the remains of a fire at the center of camp, picking idly at the bag of Skittles he’d packed for the trip and referred to as “trail mix” to irritate his brother. Sam is nowhere to be seen now. Dean appears to be doing little more than quietly passing the time.

After what happened this afternoon, Sam’s absence from Dean’s side is noteworthy enough to make Castiel apprehensive about joining him, but he pushes past his reservations and powers ahead. He’d rather sit with Dean in silence than go anywhere else, and though Dean has never said so, he knows that he’s not alone in his preference for spending what little downtime they have together.

Up close, he can see that the fire has burned down to little more than coals and ash. Dean prods at the sole remaining log with a stick, disrupting sparks and dark plumes of smoke that curl up into the night.

As Castiel sits beside him, the log shifts, pressing down into the loamy earth. Dean glances over to look at him. The weak light of the embers casts him in its deep orange glow, reflecting in his eyes, bright as the long-gone sunset. Something in Castiel’s chest settles at the sight.

“You doing okay?” Dean asks, offering the bag of Skittles. Castiel can only shrug as he takes a few and pops them into his mouth. 

Almost as soon as he starts chewing, they dissolve into their component parts—citric acid splitting into carbon and hydrogen and oxygen; sucrose molecules breaking down into fructose and glucose. With effort, he focuses on all of them at once and captures a glimpse of the intended taste, just for a moment, before an unfathomable number of branched chain starch molecules unravel on his tongue, overwhelming the bright flavor he’d briefly enjoyed. 

He’s been working on this. Testing things, training himself to taste the sum and not the parts. It’s a work in progress, but it’s one that he’s resolved to see through until it’s an automatic process.

“Relatively,” he says, and swallows the candy before he has to taste it any longer. “How are you?”

“Relatively,” Dean parrots, folding the bag up and poking it into his jacket pocket. “What a day, huh?”

“Mm.”

“Where’s Sam?”

“With Mom and Jack. Sleeping. Don’t think he wanted to be alone while he’s in the camp.”

Dean doesn’t gesture toward the place they designated to hold Lucifer overnight, but Castiel looks toward it anyway. He imagines he can feel his brother’s cold, prickling energy down to the tips of his fingers. Like frostbite. He frowns and turns back to Dean; tries to soak in his warmth instead.

“You should get some rest, too,” he says.

“Yeah, probably. Tomorrow’s gonna be a bitch.”

“Even by our standards,” Castiel agrees.

Dean huffs, his mouth ticking up to the right, and scuffs his heel in the dirt. Castiel watches as he picks idly at the log they sit upon; the twitch in his cheek as he hisses and inspects his index finger before raising it to his mouth. The shape of his lips as he tries to suck a splinter loose from where it's buried itself beneath his fingernail.

“Damnit,” Dean mutters, pulling his hand back to look at it with a frown.

“Here.”

Reaching out, Castiel catches Dean’s wrist in one hand and his fingers in the other, expending a shimmering wisp of grace to work the splinter free. He’s not sure what compels him to make such a show of it — he could have healed the minuscule injury from where he’s sitting without touching Dean at all — but he can’t help himself.

At some point, years ago, his duty to help Dean and his desire to be close to him got all tangled up. He can no longer recall when he’d started healing him through unnecessary touch, but it’s the singular selfish thing that he does, and he’s not planning on stopping unless Dean tells him to.

The splinter falls silently to the dirt at their feet. Castiel curls the tip of his index finger against the tiny puncture in Dean’s skin, directing his grace as it knits back together.

Beside him, Dean lets out an unsteady breath, and a pulse of love stretches out from his soul to brush against Castiel’s true form. If he’s being truly honest with himself, this is another major reason why Castiel allows himself to touch him in moments like this; he knows that Dean enjoys it as much as he does.

Despite all his half-hearted blustering about personal space, Dean is a tactile person, and the moments when Castiel heals him are the moments when his heart is the most open. When he lets himself feel the way he feels without holding back, just for a breath or two. It’s enough. It’s always been enough.

But now—the feeling draws out longer than usual, shifting to something closer to hunger, to desire, and Dean’s fingers flex a little in Castiel’s hand. When Castiel starts to pull away they turn to gently grip him back. And this… 

This is new. 

Not the feeling—that has been there for years, poorly concealed and just below the surface—but the action that echoes it. Dean has never done something like this, and Castiel has never been brave enough to try it himself. He’s still not, he realizes as he looks down at their hands tangled together and tries to strategize a safe response.

He’s got no ideas, so he doesn’t move. Couldn’t move if he tried.

“Y’know,” Dean says, interrupting his thoughts with his voice pitched low, and Castiel glances back up to see that his pupils are blown wide. Apprehensive. Tense. _Aroused_ , Castiel’s mind supplies, and he pushes the thought away just in time for Dean to make him wonder if he’d been too hasty in rejecting it. “I don’t think I can stand to be alone tonight, either.”

There’s a clear, deliberate weight to Dean’s words, and although Castiel recognizes it for what it is almost immediately, he hasn’t got the slightest clue how he’s expected to address it. How could he? They’ve kept such a delicate balance for so long that even this one sentence feels monumental. It’s as though Dean has casually dropped an anchor onto a scale that would have been thrown off kilter by a feather, and now he’s just sitting here, acting as though he hasn’t just thrown out the entire rule book of their relationship.

Castiel is afraid to respond at all. He wishes he wasn’t, but fear compounded by habit is hard to shake.

“I could watch over you,” he offers eventually, hating himself for taking the easy way out even as he says it, and waiting for the inevitable refusal. Dean exhales as he slowly pulls his hand away and shifts his gaze back to the glowing embers.

“Aren’t you tired, Cas?”

“I’m running a little low on grace, but—”

“No, I mean—aren’t you tired of… of this.” He waves between them with an open hand, the movement far too casual to be anything but calculated, and glances back to meet Castiel’s eyes. “We could die tomorrow.”

“You could say that about every day, for us.”

“Yeah, but,” Dean huffs. “Look, can we just—” 

Pushing to his feet, Dean takes a few steps away before turning back to look at Castiel, his hands tense at his sides, clenching into fists and releasing, over and over as though he needs the movement to keep from… something. Castiel isn’t sure what. But his eyes are pleading. Begging Castiel to meet him halfway.

Castiel wants to. He’s just trying to figure out how.

“Can we skip this part?” Dean asks.

“What do you—”

“The—” Dean briefly lifts his hands, then lets them fall helplessly back to his sides. “The… I don’t know, man. The freakin’ confessions. The discussion. The… the whole _what now_ thing. All that bullshit.” He looks up at Castiel. “Can we just skip it?”

Castiel blinks, slow.

“You mean—”

“I mean I’ve had enough, Cas. I’m tired, and I don’t— I don’t see the point in ignoring this anymore. I haven’t really seen the point in a while. Didn’t want to rock the boat, I guess, but now…”

“But now you’re tired.”

“Yeah.”

“So you’re rocking the boat.”

Dean doesn’t respond to the question directly; just looks at Castiel with a determination in his eyes that leaves no room for misunderstanding, and says, “I’m going to bed. You should come with me.”

He doesn’t wait for a reply. Doesn’t even pause to see if his assumption that Castiel understands his meaning is correct.

Castiel is surprised at his confidence. Not because he’s wrong to have it, but because even though this thing that’s been growing between them for near on a decade has been more difficult to deny with every passing year, even though Castiel has been able to feel Dean’s longing for him as sharply as he’s been able to feel his own, Dean has still never acknowledged it in any concrete way.

For his own part, Castiel has given him more openings than his pride would like him to admit, but Dean’s played things so close to his chest the entire time that Castiel has always assumed he didn’t want to deal with it at all.

He just didn’t think they’d ever get here. 

There’s always been something in the way. An apocalypse, a near death, an actual death. Something. When he came back from the Empty, miraculously alive again against all odds, he’d thought to himself, it’s now or never, and Dean had barreled into him, fingers pressed to the back of his neck as they’d embraced in a dimly lit alleyway, and Castiel had felt love radiating from him like light from a star, and still nothing had changed. 

So, _never_ , he’d thought. He’d made his peace with it. Being near Dean was enough, if being with Dean was not an option.

But now—

Dean is already nearing the dilapidated mess hall he’s been set up in for the night—the camp only has so much space for sleeping quarters—and Castiel hurries to catch up. He slips through the door behind him and into the dark.

Inside, the main room is cluttered and overfull with folding tables. 

A dozen or so chairs are stacked along the walls, and the faint scent of instant coffee lingers in the air. Ahead, Dean maneuvers through a tight gap between tables toward a dark red door. When they make their way inside, it’s to find a cramped storeroom, where a thin bedroll and blanket has been set out for Dean on the floor alongside several unlabelled boxes and a shelf of cleaning supplies. His backpack sits at one end like a makeshift pillow.

Near the ceiling, there’s a single narrow window, and the moonlight that filters through its dusty pane catches on the buttons on Dean’s jacket, reflects bright in his eyes as he turns to look back at Castiel.

Years ago, in a similarly cramped storeroom in the Rexford Gas n Sip, Castiel had knelt on the floor to gather his things while Dean waited outside in the Impala, and wondered if perhaps one of them would be brave enough to ask for a single room at the motel they were headed toward. 

He’d known already, even then, that what they felt for each other was far beyond the limits of friendship. Had felt it for a long time before that night, too, though it had taken an abrupt fall from Heaven and a brand new soul grown under the worst possible circumstances for him to truly understand what it meant.

But just for a few minutes, kneeling in that storeroom, he’d thought that perhaps this was the night. That Dean would make his move. That he’d summon the courage to make a move himself. 

The way Dean had looked at him earlier that night had him feeling recklessly hopeful, and he’d been halfway convinced that they’d arrive at the Rexford Motor Inn, and their hands would touch as they walked to the room, and some understanding would pass between them.

That they’d fall into one another before they even managed to get through the door.

He’d thought about it in sharp detail. Imagined confessing to Dean, telling him how the first thing he’d felt when the angels stopped falling was the overwhelming desire to hear Dean’s voice. To see him. To hold him. To breathe him in. 

How his fledgling soul ached every day that they’d been apart; how he’d realized, finally, that this thing between them was love.

He’d imagined it countless different ways as he pushed to his feet with a plastic bag in his hand, as he left the building and locked the door behind him, as he’d gripped the cool metal of the Impala’s door handle. As Dean’s hand had settled on the back of his seat while they reversed out of the parking space, fingers brushing carelessly against the back of Castiel’s neck.

He’s lost in the memory, still trying to wrap his head around what they’re doing here when Dean laughs aloud. Castiel meets his eyes, and feels the soul tangled up with his grace sing at the sight.

“Sorry,” Dean says, and there’s a touch of wild hysteria in his voice. “Just…” He gestures loosely around them. “Kinda hilarious that this is… we’re basically in a goddamn closet.”

Castiel can’t help but huff out a laugh himself, and Dean’s gaze drops to his mouth. It’s not the first time that’s happened. It’s not even the first time Castiel has noticed. It’s different now, though.

Because this time, Dean doesn’t immediately look away. He doesn’t step back or crack a joke or lash out or deflect. He looks at Castiel’s mouth, and he keeps on looking. And looking. And looking. Castiel feels as though he might buzz right out of his body if he doesn’t just—

“Dean.”

Dean’s eyes lift to meet Castiel’s, and there’s a shade of reckless humor in them. Something devious and endlessly irritating that makes Castiel want to throttle him for making him wait, even now, when they’re supposedly not doing that anymore.

“Yeah?”

“What are you waiting for?”

The answer, as it turns out, is _nothing_. Dean grins, and crowds into his space, and kisses him. Just like that. 

As though it’s always been this easy. Maybe it has been.

Raising one palm to rest against Castiel’s chest, Dean slides the other into his hair, thumb dragging soft against the back of his ear as he moves him into place, and Castiel lets himself be directed. Lets Dean push him back until he’s pressed firmly against the door. Lets Dean tilt his chin just so, and deepen their kiss.

The memory of Dean’s fingers accidentally brushing against his neck that night in the Impala comes rushing back full force now that Dean is holding him there so purposefully. Kissing him with a hunger that Castiel had resigned himself to thinking would never be sated.

Even now, he’s still not sure it will be. Dean is kissing him, but Castiel still longs for him as though they aren’t pressed flush together.

Castiel isn’t sure if his perception is skewed by love, but as Dean’s lips part, he decides that despite the molecules, Skittles taste better on Dean’s tongue, and it suddenly feels incredibly important that Dean knows. Not about the Skittles, but the rest. Everything.

 _Can we skip it?_ Dean had asked, but now that they’re here, Castiel realizes that doesn’t want to. 

They’ve avoided talking for years, and as Dean put it—Castiel is tired.

With his hands on Dean’s waist, working under his jacket to pull him closer still even as he breaks their kiss, Castiel does what he hadn’t been brave enough to do in Rexford. He tells Dean the truth.

{ii}

Cas says, “I love you,”and Dean’s heart doesn’t flip. It doesn’t stutter or stumble or skip a beat. It doesn’t falter. Doesn’t seize.

Cas says, _I love you_ , and Dean just feels a kind of soul-deep warmth that starts somewhere in the center of his chest and expands ever outward. It spreads to the tips of his fingers and the soles of his feet; fills him until he’s overflowing with it.

Cas says, _I love you_ , and Dean feels free.

“I don’t need you to say anything,” Cas goes on before he can even try to respond. “I just wanted you to hear it.”

They’re still pressed together in the storeroom, Cas’ hands fixed to his waist, his lips close enough that Dean feels them brush against his own when he speaks, and the sensation is grounding. Something real and solid that he can hold onto.

He wonders if that’s why he’s not panicking in the face of Cas starting one of the conversations he’d been doing his level best to avoid. Because Cas being here like this, saying this to him while still holding on is proof that he’s not about to bail as soon as the cards are on the table. That if this is it, if tonight is the only night they get to be together like this, it’s not because Cas wants things to be that way. That if he leaves Dean again, it’s not through choice.

Tightening his fingers in Cas’ coat, Dean nods, just barely. He’s not panicking, he reminds himself. He’s not panicking. 

He’s just… bad at this. Stunted. Like one of those stray dogs in the miserable documentaries Sam is always watching—twitchy and distrustful of any extended hand thanks to years of neglect.

Because it’s not that Dean doesn’t feel the same. There’s an ache in him, a need for comfort and love and closeness that he wants to give and receive and fucking bask in, but he’s been burying it all so deep for so long that he needs a little time to dig it back out. A little patience to bring it into the light of day.

For some reason, Cas seems to think that Dean is worth the trouble. Worth the wait. Cas loves him. He’s everything Dean never thought he deserved, but Dean’s starting to realize that maybe that’s not something he gets to decide for himself.

“I don’t want to embarrass you,” Cas continues, his hands wandering up and down Dean’s sides, skipping delicately over his ribs like Dean is something to be gentle with. Something to be treasured. “But… Dean, I didn’t know what love was until you taught me. Just by being who you are. By loving your family, your friends, the world you fight so hard to save. You mean more to me than I can say, and being with you like this is—”

Overwhelmed, Dean leans forward to kiss him again, just to give himself time to find his footing.

Cas tastes sweet. It takes Dean a moment to realize why. 

He almost wishes he’d never offered him the candy—if only so he’d be able to find out what Cas tastes like underneath it. _Next time_ , he thinks, and curls his fist around Cas’ tie to hold him in place. God, he wants there to be a next time.

This might have started thanks to a last-night-on-Earth, time to throw caution to the wind moment of reckless abandon, but now that they’re finally here, Dean needs it to be a first night instead. A beginning.

But when he pulls back, he’s still lost.

“—everything. It’s everything to me,” Cas finishes his sentence and smiles, lifting a hand to trace over Dean’s jaw as he looks at him, ever patient and undemanding. As though it’s perfectly fine that Dean hasn’t said anything back. Like he knows, even without the words. Like he understands that it’s not because Dean doesn’t feel it. 

Dean still needs to make sure.

“Cas, I— I can’t, I just—”

“I know, Dean.”

“It’s not that I _don’t_ — you know that, right?”

“I know.”

Tilting their foreheads together, Cas' nose grazes against Dean’s, and he kisses him again, soft and slow. The sweetness of it shakes something loose in Dean’s chest. Not enough to say what he wishes he could say, but… enough for something.

“Gonna show you,” Dean says finally, and pushes Cas back against the door firmly enough to make it rattle in its frame.

Every kiss he presses to Cas’ mouth is another confession he can’t find the words for; it’s _I want you_ and _I’m yours_ and _I choose you_ and _I trust you_ and a million other things that all add up to a love so big, so intrinsic to Dean’s sense of reality that he can hardly remember what his world was like before he felt it. 

Somehow, in spite of his struggle to give voice to what he’s feeling, kissing Cas doesn’t feel new. Even when it shifts to something greedier, when it stops being just a kiss and starts being the precursor to something else, something more, it all feels familiar.

The slow roll of their hips against one another, the helpless gasps that Dean steals from Cas’ mouth as he wrestles his trench coat free—none of it feels like the first time they’ve been together like this. It’s as though these are all things that belong to them, that have always belonged to them. The fact that they have them now is nothing more than a long-awaited return to their natural state of being.

Without breaking their kiss, he loosens Cas’ tie and unbuttons his shirt. Untucks the hem and works his hands underneath, skipping fingertips over Cas’ taut stomach and catching the fine hairs under his navel before sweeping lower.

“Yeah?” he asks, and Cas nods, feverish as Dean dips his fingers under his belt.

His knuckles brush Cas’ skin as he works the buckle open, then the button and zipper behind it, and between one moment and the next his hand slips through the open fly and tugs down his underwear. Cas is already half-hard, and the weight of him in Dean’s hand has his own cock pulsing in sympathy as he strokes him slow from base to tip, thrilled by the way Cas bucks into his palm like it was made for him.

Staring down between them, he watches Cas’ cock slide through his loose fist. Pink and wet, hot against Dean’s skin. Cas sighs, whines, and Dean squeezes him a little tighter, rubbing at the base with his thumb until Cas reaches down to catch Dean’s wrist and hold him in place as he takes over, pushing into Dean’s hand at a frantic pace.

“Fuck, Cas,” Dean breathes, but he barely gets the words out before Cas’ free hand curls into his hair and tugs him roughly into another open-mouthed kiss that has his toes curling in his boots.

 _How long has he been holding back?_ Dean wonders, dazed as Cas groans against his lips. _How many times has he wanted to just pin me down and have his way with me?_

Suddenly, it’s all he can think about. 

His mind is a tangled mess of need; his chest cracking open with a longing so deep that he’s dizzy with the desire for Cas to just take what he wants. He _needs_ it. Needs Cas to fix him with that look he gets when he’s assuming control of a situation, and take Dean wholly out of himself for a while. To free him from the burden of being in control.

Dean is no stranger to letting his partner take the lead in the bedroom, but with Cas… he realizes that he wants to surrender completely. Because Cas sees him. Cas knows him, better than anyone, and there’s nobody he trusts more to take him apart. Nobody he trusts more to reassemble him when it’s all said and done. Nobody he trusts more to touch all the broken parts of him that don’t quite fit together without judging him for the gaps that remain.

 _He’d fill the spaces,_ Dean thinks. Then; _Fuck, he already does._

Licking into Cas’ mouth in a filthy slide that has Cas tightening his hold around Dean’s wrist as his thrusts grow more erratic, Dean’s mind spins through the ways they could be together. All the ways that Cas could dismantle him. 

He pictures it in frantic flashes; himself on his knees, Cas’ hand in his hair, tilting his head back as he strokes himself, just out of reach. Cas spreading him out on the floor, shifting that same tight grip from his wrist to his knee and pushing Dean’s thigh to his chest so Cas can slide into him deep without letting him look away. And—Dean twitches in his jeans at the sudden, dizzying thought—Cas teasing him without a touch, just his grace, that cold-hot-electric tingle that runs through his body every time Cas heals him, focused and intent under his skin.

Involuntarily, Dean whines low in his throat, and squeezes Cas in his hand, and Cas just _stops_.

His hips stutter and lock, and for brief a moment Dean thinks he’s about to come, but then he lets go. Shifts his hands to push lightly at Dean’s chest, making him back up on wobbly legs.

Breathless, impossibly hard, Dean stares at him in the dim light and tries not to second guess himself. Because Cas doesn’t look upset. He doesn’t look confused or bewildered or angry. He looks—

He looks incredible. Flushed and hungry and more short of breath than an angel has any right to be, with his suit coat rumpled and hanging off his shoulders. His shirt is unbuttoned, his pants around his thighs. His cock is red and curving up out of the white cotton underwear that Dean never bothered to push all the way down. Dean wants to drop to his knees and swallow him whole. He wants it so bad his mouth waters.

But Cas pushed him away.

Darting his tongue out over his lower lip before he pulls it between his teeth, Dean takes a steadying breath through his nose and tries to redirect his blood flow to his brain as he meets Cas’ eyes.

“Too much?” 

Cas shakes his head.

“Too effective.”

His voice is raw, and the sound of it rolls through Dean like thunder.

“So—”

Shuffling forward, Dean reaches for him, but Cas shakes his head again. Dean settles his hands on Cas’ waist instead. Thumbs at the smooth skin of his hip, where the dark Enochian script of his tattoo stands out in the dim light.

“I’d like to try something,” Cas says.

“Yeah? What d’you wanna try?”

“Something you’ll like.”

Dean lifts his brow, fixing Cas with a crooked grin that probably looks a lot more confident than he feels right now.

“You sound pretty sure of yourself there, Cas.” 

“I have a reliable source.” 

For a moment, Dean falters, but Cas continues before he can worry too much about what that source could be.

“You prayed to me. Just now, I—” Cas pauses, lets his gaze drop down Dean’s body before sliding back up. His fingers flex against Dean’s chest. “I felt it. I saw what you’re longing for.”

Heat floods Dean’s skin from his chest to the tips of his ears, and he stares at Cas in combined rapture and mortification. Because his thoughts had been nothing less than filthy, but Cas is saying he wants to _try_. 

“I—you saw all that?” Dean croaks, and Cas hums in response.

“You were thinking very pointedly in my direction, and I suspect that our physical connection made the prayer stronger.”

Leaning heavily back against the door behind him, Cas pulls at the buttons of Dean’s overshirt, slipping them loose, one by one. Dean glances down to watch his long fingers at work. He wants Cas to put those fingers in his mouth, to press them against his tongue, to drag them down his chest, and—

He’s so transfixed by his rapidly spiralling thoughts that he almost misses what Cas is telling him. Almost.

“I want it too, Dean,” Cas says, trailing his fingertips back up over Dean’s hips, lifting the black t-shirt he’s wearing underneath the shirt. Dean feels his stomach muscles twitch and jump with the attention. “All of it. I’d like to give you what you want, if you’ll let me.”

Cas fixes him with that look. The one Dean had been thinking of. Brow raised, jaw set, eyes dark. For a moment, Dean forgets to breathe.

“Will you let me?”

Helpless to answer, Dean leans closer, only stopping when Cas’ hand comes up to loosely grip his chin. “There’s a condition.” 

That pulls Dean up short; he meets Cas’ eyes, heart pounding hard at the look he finds there.

“I want you to ask.”

Dean swallows.

“Cas, c’mon—”

“Your needs will never be a burden to me, Dean. Certainly not in this regard. But I need you to tell me what you want, and I need you to trust that when I give it to you, it’s because you deserve it, and because I _choose_ to. Do you trust me?”

“‘Course I do.”

Cas works his fingers through Dean’s belt loops and tugs him closer, only to breathe against his lips, “Then ask.”

{iii}

Castiel has existed for longer than time has been measured, but the seconds he spends waiting for Dean’s response seem to stretch out into infinity in a way that no other moment ever has. The atmosphere in the room is close and crackling, like the air itself is waiting for an answer.

But Dean doesn’t speak. 

He just stares, dazed, until something shifts behind his eyes like a switch being flicked, and then he slips his jacket and shirts free in a fluid motion, flinging them across the tiny room before kneeling to untie his boots.

For a moment, Castiel allows himself to just stand and watch. To lean against the door and fully absorb the knowledge that Dean is finally letting himself want Castiel this way.

It’s only when Dean pulls his boots off and starts unbuttoning his jeans that Castiel is spurred back into action. He makes quick work of his own clothing and leaves it in an inelegant heap on the floor.

When Dean is finally bare before him, beautiful in the soft filtered moonlight, Castiel wastes no time in hauling him close again, slotting their legs together and holding on tight.

The closeness, the vulnerability of being equally exposed, of bare skin pressed together from knee to chest; the heat of Dean hard against him, the physical evidence that yes, Dean wants him here, now, just like this—Castiel feels certain that he’ll never stop wanting to feel this way for the rest of his existence.

But though Castiel aches to kiss him, he holds back. Just lets their noses graze against one another, foreheads touching as he thumbs at the edge of Dean’s mouth and glides his other hand over his ribs. 

“I’ll give you everything you want,” Castiel tells him, and tilts out of reach when Dean lets out a needful sound and tries to kiss him again. Hums a low sound of rebuke. “But I still need you to ask.”

That pulls Dean up short; he leans his head back to meet Castiel’s eyes.

“It’s—Cas, it’s not that easy.”

“It is. It’s just me. I _love_ you, Dean. Completely. There is nothing that you could ask of me that would be a burden.”

Dean swallows, hard, and sucks his lower lip into his mouth. Bites down on it as he lets out a long, shaky breath.

“Do you want me to kiss you?” Castiel asks, though he knows the answer.

“Yeah,” Dean says, and Castiel slips his thumb along his lower lip to hold him back when he tries to lean in again. “Yes.”

“Then you’ll have to earn it.”

Objectively, Castiel thinks that this is an absurd thing for him to say. Dean has earned a million kisses, a hundred million, _more_. 

Castiel would gladly kiss him until neither of them could remember their own names. But tonight, he wants to give Dean everything he wants, everything he needs, and his prayer had been clear.

He wants to feel worthy. 

He wants Castiel to guide him and hold him and tease him, to take pleasure from his body and to feel the proof of it on his skin.

But most of all, he wants Castiel to take the burden of decision out of his hands. He wants to be freed from the pressure of making the right choices, of making any choices at all. He wants to trust Castiel to take care of him; wants Castiel to trust himself enough for the both of them.

The fact of the matter is that Dean is more worthy of his worship than any being that Castiel has ever known, and he plans to make that overwhelmingly clear before the night is through. But if he’s going to give Dean what prayed for, he has to be certain that it’s not only what he wants, but that he wants it _now_.

If he has to withhold a few kisses in the interim, just to make sure that they’re on the same page before they go any further, then that’s how it’s going to be.

“I need to know,” Castiel says as he rests his hands on Dean’s chest to keep him where he is, “if you want to trust me with this tonight.”

Dean drags in a shaky breath, then huffs a low, helpless laugh. 

“Didn’t we agree to skip the big conversations?”

Castiel smiles, skimming his fingers over a light constellation of freckles above Dean’s left pectoral, slipping against the thin sheen of sweat that’s gathered there.

“I think we both know there was very little chance of that approach being remotely sustainable, even if it weren’t for this…” he trails off, searching for the right words to describe what they’re on the precipice of doing together.

“Low-key dominance kink?” Dean offers, his cheeks redder than ever. Castiel tilts his head to the side, studying his face.

“Is that what this is?”

“I guess?” Dean bites at the inside of his cheek. “I’m kinda used to people just… assuming. Bossing me around without asking. Shoulda known that you’d want to check in first.”

“I just want to take care of you,” Castiel says, and Dean almost seems to melt against his hands.

“Fuck. Yeah, I know you do, Cas,” Dean stares at his lips for a moment before he meets Castiel’s eyes again. “You’re really not gonna kiss me again until we talk this out?”

Castiel shakes his head, and Dean takes a steadying breath.

“Okay. Cards on the table?”

“Please.”

“I want you to, uh… call the shots. Wanna be, y’know,” his eyes dart away, and Castiel can tell that what he says next takes a lot out of him. “Good for you.”

Castiel smiles and traces his fingers over the bow of Dean’s lips.

“You are _so_ good, Dean,” he says, and this time when Dean’s lips part under his fingers, Castiel replaces them with his mouth. Dean kisses him back as though he’s been waiting a lifetime for the chance. They stay like that a while, just kissing, bodies pressed close and warm until Castiel squeezes lightly at Dean’s sides, thumbs pressing into the dip of his hips. “So, so good,” he repeats, kissing him between the words. “You’ll tell me if you change your mind?”

“Yeah.”

There’s no hesitation in Dean’s response. Just breathless certainty. It makes Castiel bolder.

“Lie down for me.”

Dean has spent his whole life following orders, but seeing him now, like this, Castiel feels certain that this is the first time he’s done so eagerly. There’s something pure in it, he thinks as he watches Dean sink onto the bedroll. The surrender; the choice to give in. The decision made to trust someone else to take the reins. To trust _him_.

Castiel intends to treat that as the gift it is.

As he shuffles back, Dean doesn’t take his eyes off Castiel. His expression is unguarded as Castiel has ever seen him, nervous but eager as he props himself up on his elbows, and Castiel feels a swell of pride at the sight of him so trusting and open and content, even here in this dusty room at the end of another world.

His willingness to do as Castiel has asked without second guessing himself for wanting it is already almost overwhelming to behold.

Castiel wants to tell Dean about the pride he feels in this moment, but he holds back. They’ve barely even started. There’ll be time.

“Thank you,” he says instead, enthralled by the way that even the smallest measure of approval makes Dean’s soul hum under his skin like music as Castiel moves to kneel between his parted knees. Once he’s there, he waits. Keeps his hands to himself and holds Dean’s gaze until he squirms and reaches for him. “Stay still, Dean. Be patient.”

Dean lowers his hands to his sides and exhales, and slowly, Castiel takes in the sight of his body.

The scars left by wounds that Dean hadn’t allowed him to heal; his bruised knuckles; the delicate skin of his wrists and his inner thighs; his muscled arms and soft stomach; the freckles on his chest, still visible through the flush that’s spread there. Every inch of him is a masterpiece, and for the first time since he pulled him from Hell, Castiel doesn’t feel the need to disguise his captivation.

“Do you have any idea—” he asks as he finally reaches out to trace reverent fingertips over Dean’s hips, dipping into his navel and back down to the soft crease of his thigh, “—how extraordinary you are?”

He can tell that Dean wants to argue with him for saying it, and he watches, fascinated, as his desire to please Castiel wins out against his instinct toward self-loathing. How he almost seems to swallow the denial down like a physical thing.

It only makes Castiel more determined to make him understand how breathtaking he is. To see himself the way Castiel sees him. To feel how Castiel loves him.

He thinks of Dean’s face back by the campfire as Castiel had healed him, and of Dean’s prayer, and knows exactly how to do it. Flattening his hand on Dean’s stomach, fingers spread wide, he holds Dean’s gaze.

“Tell me if this is too much.”

“What are you—” 

Dean doesn’t finish his question before Castiel sends grace out through his palm in a slow, undulating rhythm. It sinks just beneath the surface of Dean’s skin, but this time he doesn’t direct it. Just lets it flow outward, a spreading heat that rolls from Dean’s stomach to his toes, his fingers, the crown of his head.

Between Dean’s legs, his erection visibly throbs with every pulse of grace that Castiel sends into him, suffusing him with Castiel’s love.

“Do you feel that?”

It seems to take a lot of effort for Dean to force his eyes to focus, and when he finally does, he looks from Castiel to his groin and back again, as if he’s insane for asking the question. At his sides, his fingers grip the bedroll like it’s the only thing keeping him from lifting off the floor.

“Are you kidding?” he asks, voice tight and strained as he tries not to move. Castiel shakes his head.

“Not _that_ , though I’m glad to learn it has such an effect,” Castiel says, and sends another wave through him, lets the full force of his love wind in and around Dean’s body alongside the grace. Lets it hold him in a way that Castiel’s physical form is too limited to allow. “I meant _that_.”

Dean gasps.

“Do it again.”

Castiel does, sending it further this time. Pressing his love, his desire, his need into Dean’s skin until he can feel it the way Castiel does; soul-deep and soaring.

Suddenly, his eyes are bright with tears, and Castiel thinks he’s done too much. Shown him too much. That he’s frightened Dean with the reality of how Castiel sees him. Overwhelmed him with the sensation of how it feels to love him, to know him. 

But Dean takes a shaky breath, and stares up at him in awe.

“You love me,” Dean says.

“I do.”

“I know you... you told me already, but— Cas, you love me _so much_ , and I— I— I felt it, all the reasons, and the way— and how much you—”

Dean seems lost, dazed as he babbles, and Castiel begins to withdraw his grace when he feels the familiar sensation of a wordless, aching prayer, arcing across the space between them like a bolt of lightning that starts in Dean’s soul and touches Castiel at his core. It begs him to stay.

It’s barely a second before Dean’s voice soars along the connection.

_What you just did—can I do that for you, too? If you touch_

The question is so unexpected that it takes Castiel a moment to fully comprehend what Dean is asking him. What Dean is _offering_ him. Castiel stares down at him in disbelief.

“You would do that?”

 _You’ve touched my soul before,_ Dean prays again, 

“Please,” he says, and Castiel wishes with everything he has that he didn’t have to deny him. But it’s too dangerous. If Dean opened himself up like that here, in this world where an archangel might sense the vulnerability of his soul—Castiel couldn’t live with himself if something happened to him.

He cups Dean’s jaw, drawing him into another kiss.

“We can’t,” he says with regret. “Not now. Not here. But if you still want to try, when it’s safe, when we’re home…”

“I’ll want to.”

Castiel gazes down at him.

“You sound incredibly certain for someone who supposedly isn’t even convinced that we’ll make it out of this world alive.”

“Maybe I just needed the incentive.”

The expression on his face is so alight with love that Castiel isn’t sure that Dean even needs to open his soul any further to show him how he feels.

“You’re breathtaking,” Castiel tells him. Dean closes his eyes, and Castiel taps lightly on his chest. “Eyes open, Dean. Look at me.”

Dean does, and Castiel braces himself on his hands as he slides his knees under Dean’s thighs, encouraging Dean to bracket him with his legs before he leans down to kiss him slow. He lets his grace skim the boundary of Dean’s soul as they kiss, sparking with every sinuous roll of his hips against Dean’s.

When Dean sighs his name into the scant space between them, once, twice, three times in a row, Castiel pulls back a little to meet his eye. 

“Yes, Dean?”

“Just. Wanna touch you,” he says, and Castiel looks down to see his fingers are tense where he’s still gripping the bedroll, right where they’d been when Castiel first told him not to move. It seems like forever ago.

 _I want to be good for you_ , Dean had told him, and Castiel is glad for this chance to tell him that he is. To reward him not for his restraint, but for being brave enough to ask for what he wants despite how difficult he finds it.

“Oh, Dean—thank you. Yes, you can touch me.”

He’s expecting Dean to grip his hips. His thighs. For Dean to haul him close and rock against him with the fervor he sees in his eyes. But he doesn’t. Instead, his hands just slide up Castiel’s chest, fingers soft against his throat, skimming over his lips and the shell of his ear before curving around the back of his neck and into his hair.

“You’re surprisingly good at this,” he says against Castiel’s lips. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

Castiel knows it’s not intended as such—he’s not exactly practiced in this arena, after all, and they both know it—but he can’t help but take Dean’s words as a challenge. Pulling back, he pushes at Dean’s shoulder until he lies down again, his head pillowed on the backpack.

“I might not have _done_ this before, but I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”

Dean’s surprise is palpable--his delight equally so.

“You thought about it?” he asks, fingers dancing along Castiel’s legs until Castiel catches hold of them and pushes them down above Dean’s head with a meaningful raise of his brow.

“If you’d like to move again, you’ll have to earn the privilege.”

Dean grins at him and grips his hands together, and Castiel slides his palm down over Dean’s chest to his stomach, leaning down to press his mouth to the place where his hand had been.

“I didn’t think about _this_ exactly,” he says. “But I have liked to imagine all the different ways I might be able to please you, if I ever had the chance.” He shifts to bite softly at Dean’s hip; soothes over the skin with his tongue. Dean’s whole body is taut with tension. “All the ways you might please me. Would you like me to tell you about them?” 

He looks up to meet Dean’s eyes, kissing along his chest, his lower lip catching on Dean’s nipple as he goes. It stiffens under his touch, and he can’t help but dart his tongue out to tease it when Dean swallows stiffly at the sensation. “Or would you prefer to be surprised?”

“Fuck,” Dean murmurs, and Castiel hums.

“Fucking you did feature in several of my fantasies,” he agrees, and Dean lets out a low sound, his hips twitching up and making his erection bump against Castiel’s chest, trailing wet against his skin. It’s almost enough to distract him from his task, but he holds firm. Lifts his brow and looks up at Dean’s face. “I believe I told you to stay still.”

Dean’s eyes are lust-dark, his lips bitten red. Sitting back up, Castiel glides his thumb over Dean’s Adam’s apple, down into the dip of his throat. It bobs when Dean swallows.

“Was it my use of profanity, or the thought of the act that made you lose control?”

“Who says it’s not both?”

“I’ll endeavor to keep that in mind,” Castiel says, circling Dean’s nipple, still wet from his tongue. “But you never answered my first question. Do you want me to tell you what I imagined doing with you?”

“Yeah. Yes. Tell me.”

“I thought a lot about how you might taste, if I took you into my mouth.” Tilting his head in thought, he reaches between them to touch Dean’s erection. Watches the shape that Dean’s mouth makes when he teases his fingers through the dark hair at the base; the way his eyes flutter when he skims them up to the wet tip; the way he bites at his lips and squeezes his eyes shut when Castiel shifts his hand low again to rub his knuckles against Dean’s perineum. “The sounds you might make if I stimulated your prostate with my fingers before I fucked you. Would you enjoy that?”

“Is that a serious question?”

“I won’t do it unless I know you want me to,” Castiel tells him, which is admittedly a half truth—he already knows that Dean wants him to, after all. He just wants to hear him say it, and he’s already beginning to find that there’s something unexpectedly thrilling about this dynamic Dean had ached for.

Over the years they’ve known one another, on the occasions that he’s allowed himself to think of Dean in this way, when he’s imagined some scenario in which they might finally come together, he’s always expected that their first time together would be fast and frantic and messy; that they’d fall together without thinking. That it would happen in the heat of some life-or-death moment.

He never anticipated anything like this, but he’s never been happier to be wrong.

Pressing a little more firmly against Dean’s sweat-damp skin, edging closer to the place where Dean wants him, Castiel stares at him expectantly.

“You said you wanted to be good for me, Dean. Are you going to be good, or will I need to make you work harder for it?”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Dean gasps, squeezing his hands so tightly together that Castiel can see his knuckles turning white. “I’ve created a monster.”

“That’s still not an answer.”

“Yeah, I’ll be good. And yeah, I want you to.”

“You want me to what?”

“Want your mouth on my dick,” he says, and Castiel bends down to tongue over the tip, tasting the bitter salt of him. Dean cries out loud, his voice breaking with the force of it, bouncing off the walls, and it takes more effort than Castiel wants to admit to keep himself from caving in without any more discussion. But letting Dean off the hook now would mean missing out on hearing him say the rest. And Castiel finds he’s desperate to hear it.

“Is that all?”

“No. _No_ , I want. Want your fingers in me. And your grace again. And I want you to— want you to fuck me. I want everything you said, Cas. Please. Just—take it slow, okay? It’s been a while.”

Wrapping his fingers around the shaft of Dean’s erection, Castiel looks up at him and lets his grace ripple along the soft, slick skin, just to see Dean’s eyes roll back before he goes to work.

“Believe me, Dean,” he says, pausing to drag his tongue along the ridge beneath the head. “I have no intention of rushing.”

{iv}

 _A while_ is an understatement. It’s been years since Dean did this. More than a decade, now that he’s really thinking about it.

It’s not as though he’s gone that whole time without getting himself off this way—in the first couple of months after they moved into the bunker, he’d taken full advantage of the previously unheard of level of privacy that having a room of his own afforded him, and had some particularly adventurous solo sessions—but with someone else? God no.

Honestly, he hasn’t felt safe enough to do this with another person since before he went to Hell.

Even when he’s hooked up with men in the years since Cas pulled him out (a handful of hunters and civilians, and one twinky, wise-ass cop in Minnesota who _desperately_ needed to be put in his place) he’s made sure to always be the one on top, regardless of how much he likes it both ways.

So by now, Dean is used to his own callused fingers. He’s more than accustomed to his own meagre reach that he’s never quite managed to get deep enough to really satisfy. But Cas’ fingers are softer than Dean’s. Long and clever; gentle until they’re not.

He works one of them into Dean slowly as he slides his lips down Dean’s cock, and the heat of his mouth, the suction, the smooth ridges of his palate would all have Dean teetering on the edge even without the steady thrum of grace that hasn’t stopped since they started. If Dean didn’t know any better, he would think that Cas did this all the time.

It’s as though Cas can see where he needs to be touched; like he’s following a map laid out on Dean’s skin, every nerve ending a pinpoint of need that Cas hones in on, easy as anything. He licks and bites and sucks and strokes every single place that Dean needs to be touched. Gives him what he wants before Dean even knows he wants it. Gives it to him like he _deserves_ it. Like he’s worthy of this kind of focus, this kind of love.

Holding still under his attention isn’t easy.

Dean wants to grind down against Cas’ fingers, wants to push up into his mouth—but he won’t. Cas asked him not to move, and Dean is determined to do as he’s told. To let Cas decide how much to give him. To be good. _God_ , he wants to be good.

“Beautiful,” Cas says, and gives him such a slow, luxurious lick that Dean nearly loses it then and there. It’s so distracting that he doesn’t notice that a second finger has joined the first until it’s already knuckle-deep inside him, and that feeling is back. The liquid heat of grace easing Cas’ way as he twists his hand and presses deeper.

Nobody has _ever_ touched him like this. Nobody else could. 

It makes Dean’s toes curl.

“ _Fuck_ Cas, buddy— I’m gonna—”

“Not yet,” Castiel tells him, like Dean has any real choice in the matter, and Dean squeezes his hands more tightly together above his head. Sinks his teeth into his lower lip and breathes through his nose. It’s barely enough.

“I can’t.”

“You _can_ , Dean. There’s nothing you’re incapable of. Hold on for me.”

He slides another finger alongside the others; twists his wrist and presses deep, rubbing insistently against Dean’s prostate until he sees stars, and sends another burst of grace through him. Dean feels suspended by it. Alight with it. Surrounded and known. Like he could live in this moment forever; like he already has. 

Like something in him is waking up.

He’s floating somewhere outside of himself, secure in a way that is wholly foreign to anything he’s ever known, when Cas’ voice floats into his awareness, rumbling soft and perfect against the skin of his throat.

“Come back to me, Dean,” Cas murmurs.

He feels the phantom touch of Cas’ fingers inside him, the warmth of his mouth, as though Cas is still touching him everywhere at once.

Dean has no idea how he hasn’t come yet—it’s felt seconds away for what seems like hours—but when Cas presses his lips to the skin of his throat, stubble catching against stubble as he works his way along Dean’s jaw, he realizes he doesn’t care.

“Wanna keep you,” he blurts without thinking. He feels Cas smiling.

“You can. I’m yours.”

Dean’s heart pounds.

“Say it again.”

“I’m yours, Dean. I belong to you.”

“Kiss me.”

Cas does, and Dean feels it in every molecule of himself, like light that warms him from within. “C’mon, sweetheart,” he breathes against Cas’ mouth, winding his arms around Cas’ shoulders, pulling him in. “Want you closer. Please. Need you.”

Cas sighs his name, and Dean’s heart feels full to bursting.

“Please,” Dean says again, and his mouth falls open as Cas eases inside, sliding torturously slow until his pelvis is pressed tightly to Dean’s sweat-damp thighs. He stays there, unmoving, gazing down at Dean with a look in his eyes like he’s not sure how they got here.

Dean can relate.

Under his hands, he feels the muscles of Cas’ back flexing, and it’s not until he slides his palms around to rest on the slight curve of his pecs that he realizes he’s moved without asking. Cas doesn’t seem to have noticed, or if he has, he’s not complaining. Still, Dean doesn’t want to push his luck. He pulls his hands back over his head and grasps his own wrists.

Cas blinks once, slow and blissed out, and smiles so bright that Dean feels it spreading over him like sunlight.

“Is this what you wanted?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Dean sighs, and Cas draws his hips back before rocking slowly forward. The pace he sets is so measured that Dean could weep. He feels every inch; the stretch, the slide, the heat of him. 

“I wish you could see yourself,” Cas tells him. “How beautiful you are like this.”

His hands slide over Dean’s legs, hooking under his knees and pushing until Dean’s thighs are pressed to his chest, his cock trapped between their stomachs and leaking against his overheated skin. Cas kisses him again, his movements steady and deliberate, never speeding up. 

It takes far too long for Dean to realize that Cas is just doing what he asked. _Take it slow_. He’s awaiting further instruction. Waiting, again, for Dean to tell him what he wants. Making him work for it.

It’s almost enough to make Dean hysterical when he thinks about it, because he gave Cas blanket permission to control him, to command him, to have Dean completely at his mercy, and the first thing Cas decided to do with that power was turn it around and demand that Dean ask for what he wants.

Cas, ever the strategist, dommed him out of submission. 

_This sly motherfucker_ , Dean thinks helplessly, staring up at Cas as he shifts against him with all the urgency of the tide. _I love him so goddamn much._

The most stubborn part of Dean wants to try and wait him out. To just lie here and take it until Cas can’t hold himself back any longer. To wait for Cas to lose his cool and start really going for it; for Cas to press his legs down harder, make his muscles burn with the stretch, and fuck him until he can’t see straight.

But once he’s started thinking about it, he realizes that doesn’t want to wait. He wants Cas to do it _now_. And Cas, who has on occasion waited patiently in an uncomfortable motel armchair for eight freaking hours, whose entire concept of time is grossly skewed by the fact that he’s a million fucking years old, has firmly placed that ball in Dean’s court. 

The way he’s started looking down at Dean with one pointedly raised eyebrow over the past couple of minutes suggests that he’s acutely aware that Dean has figured him out. And more than that, he knows exactly what Dean’s wanting but not asking for, and there’s no way in Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, or this literally-God-damned Apocalypse universe that he’s going to do it until Dean speaks up.

“You _asshole_ ,” Dean gasps out as Cas slows his movements even more, mouth tilting to one side in an artful smirk that reminds Dean vividly of a night years past, back when Dean had still been able to pass off the low swoop in his stomach whenever Cas was around as a combination of lust and fear in the presence of something powerful and otherworldly. A night outside a cheap motel in Ohio, streetlight glinting in Cas’ eyes as he’d said, _Just so you understand… Why I can’t help._ That smile had set Dean’s head spinning when he’d seen it back then. Seeing it again now, like this, is maddening in the best way possible. “You’re doing it on purpose.”

“Of course I am.”

“ _Cas_.”

“If there’s something you want...”

“You know there is.”

“Hm. I could slow down,” Castiel suggests, grinding his hips almost to a complete stop, pressed deep. Dean all but whimpers. “Or I could—”

He touches the tips of his fingers to Dean’s chest again, and grace spools out from every point of contact, runs through him like a river and pools where they’re joined. 

“Fuck, fuck, _Cas_ — please, just— too much— _shit_ — I’m gonna— I can’t— _Cas_ —” 

Castiel takes mercy on him, slowly withdrawing his grace again until it’s back to a dull hum. Dean lifts his hips off the ground with a groan, chasing the feeling even as he begs for it to stop.

“Cas, _please_.”

“You know what to do, Dean.”

Dean glares up at him, though his heart isn’t in it. More than anything, he’s pissed at himself for still having so much trouble with asking. With just saying what he wants when he knows Cas won’t hesitate to give it to him.

Maybe that’s the point, he realizes, and feels like an idiot for not figuring it out sooner. Cas is making Dean’s desires his own so that Dean will have to address them. He’s so turned on that the aggravation of realizing he’s been thoroughly outmanoeuvred only makes his blood run even hotter. He doesn’t stand a chance.

“Just—c’mon. Please,” Dean all but growls, and Cas squeezes his thighs, fingers digging in as he draws out of Dean slow. _Goddamnit_ , Dean thinks, and grits his teeth, and gives up. “Fuckin’ _wreck_ me.”

“Thank you,” Cas says, and slams back into him so hard that Dean almost blacks out from the force of it.

He’s not holding back anymore, driving into Dean so hard and fast that it’s like he’s going for a world record, and though it technically means moving, Dean has to reach up to brace himself on the shelves behind his head to keep from being pushed underneath them.

They rattle against the wall; Dean glances up at them with the sudden worry that something might fall off and kill the mood.

In some distant part of his mind, he spares a moment of regret that this isn’t happening someplace more comfortable. His room in the bunker. One of the countless dusty motels they’ve woven in and out of over the years. Even the back of the Impala, cramped as it may be.

Then again, he thinks, where they are is irrelevant. Cas is on top of him, inside of him, all around him. Dean wouldn’t trade that for a goddamn thing.

“Keep your eyes on me,” Cas says, and Dean doesn’t hesitate to do as he’s told. “Good.”

 _Good_ may even be a bigger understatement than Dean saying it’s been a while. Staring up at Cas, his muscles rolling, coiling, tightening and relaxing under taut, tanned skin, his eyes somehow dark and bright all at once, Dean’s certain that nothing has ever looked better.

All the while, Cas’ grace teases him from the inside out, floods his body like it thinks the quaking in his limbs is something that needs to be healed. As though this collapse that the two of them are slowly building toward together is a problem that needs solving.

It makes him tingle all over; makes colors flash in his vision like a galaxy being born. His pupils blow wide, his breath falters as Cas’ hands slide up his chest and over his shoulders, fingers soft at his throat, his jaw, the dip behind his ears.

His back is bowing, legs shaking, and as he stares at Cas he wonders how he got to be so damn lucky.

“Now, Dean,” Cas says, and with one last deep thrust he lets the full power of his grace unfurl.

It winds around the base of Dean’s erection, curling up to the tip where a tendril dips into the slit at the crown, teasing inside, coaxing Dean over the edge until he comes so hard his cock lifts off his stomach with the force of it; three thick spurts that stripe up over his chest, almost to his chin. His thighs twitch where they’re clamped tight around Cas’ hips, and his voice tears through him in a high, keening whine that he’d be embarrassed by if he didn’t feel so good.

Cas holds perfectly still, hard and pulsing insistently against Dean’s prostate. Dean squeezes around him, and Cas’ mouth falls open at the feeling.

“Can I— do you want me to—”

“ _Please_ ,” Dean tells him, but Cas hesitates, then pulls out completely, sitting back on his heels. He holds out his hand before Dean can regret the loss.

“Come here.”

Unsteady, Dean goes to him, shuffling on his knees. He straddles Cas’ thighs when Cas tugs him close, clings tightly to his shoulders like he might float away if he doesn’t.

“Tell me what you want,” Dean says, and Cas just runs his hands up and down his back.

“Just you. Just like this,” Cas says, and licks into Dean’s mouth as he guides himself back inside. Dean’s entire body feels malleable as clay. As Cas rocks them together, his teeth close gently around Dean’s ear lobe. “Just want you to hold me.”

“Always,” Dean promises him easily as he sinks his fingers into Cas’ hair. “Any time you want.”

“Always,” Cas agrees, and lets Dean pull him back into another kiss as they move together. It’s different than before. Not the torturously slow pace that Cas teased him with, or that last desperate rush that made Dean tumble into oblivion, but something else. Something deeper.

Dean’s whole body is still oversensitive, balancing on a razor's edge of too much, but the way Cas is looking at him has him craving more against all his better judgement. Biting at the soft swell of Cas’ lower lip, he squeezes around Cas’ cock again, loving the heat of him, the way he moves. How tightly he’s holding on as Dean lifts his hips and sinks back down.

His breath is hot, tickling over Dean’s skin in shallow huffs as Dean picks up his pace.

“You gonna come in me, sweetheart?” Dean asks, and Cas grips him harder at the question, fingers pressing into his skin hard enough to bruise. “Do it. I want you to. Wanna feel you.”

Cas lets out a low sound—an involuntary moan that seems to catch him entirely off guard—and Dean drags him into another kiss, groaning into his mouth when Cas shifts, changing the angle to slide deeper, moving faster.

“Mm, that’s it, Cas. C’mon.”

And Cas cries out, and arches up, and comes, and everything clicks into place.

Through Cas’ grace, still rolling through him like Cas has forgotten how to reel it back in, Dean sees everything. 

He sees his own lips, blush-pink and parted on a breath. He sees Cas’ hands, pressed to Dean’s sweat-damp collarbone. He sees the two of them together, the way they are in this moment, a glowing, swirling mass of soul and grace, intertwined and beautiful. Cas’ grace, wrapped around them both like wings. His own soul, reaching toward Cas as though they’re still not close enough.

He feels the slick warmth of Cas’ release where he’s still pressed deep inside Dean’s body. Tastes sweat and sugar. Heated skin. 

He sees everything they’ve been in the decade since they met. Everything they’ve fought for together, and fought against for one another, and he knows that they were both fools to think that giving in to this could ever break them. That giving in to the want they’ve both felt for so long would ever do anything but make them stronger. Better. More.

Maybe they’ll die tomorrow. Maybe the end is even closer—there’s every possibility that the archangels in this world will descend on them before the night is through, and they’ll be caught unawares before the sun has come up.

But maybe they won’t. For once, he has hope.

Tilting his face into the crook of Cas’ neck, Dean holds on, holds still, putting off the inevitable separation for as long as he can. He wants to keep Cas like this, just for now. Just a little while longer. Hold him inside, safe and _his_.

He can feel Cas’ heartbeat against his cheek. It’s slow and steady. Peaceful. Dean thinks it’ll help him sleep, if Cas will lie here with him.

 _I only have to ask_ , he thinks. Pressing a kiss to his shoulder, Dean runs his hand down the length of Cas’ spine and looks up to meet his eyes. Cas is smiling back at him. Dean hopes it’s the first of many to come.

“Are you tired, Cas?”

Tilting his head to kiss Dean’s temple, his brow, the bridge of his nose, Cas hums softly before he answers.

“Not anymore,” he says, and smooths his thumb over Dean’s jaw. “But I’ll rest with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to Nat and Maria, who read the first ~1500 words of this fic back in October and didn't discourage me from continuing. 
> 
> Is the rest any good? Who knows! Is it tonally consistent? Probably not! But it's _done_ , which means that I can stop second guessing the way I've written the grace sex parts of this and move on. Hope y'all liked the thing, and I'll hopefully have more words to share on here soon.
> 
> _______________________________________
> 
> Title from [I Belong To You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljo8VEEgcVg) by Blanco White
> 
> Coals aglow in our eyes, free of souls  
> In our hearts red blood beat forever  
> Tired as we are
> 
> When I wake, steal the dawn  
> Lead my mind, hear me call  
> I see no other
> 
> I said _I belong to you_  
>  Said _I belong to you_  
>  Said _I belong to you_
> 
> _______________________________________
> 
> A quick note from [my Ao3 profile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imogenbynight/profile) which unfortunately feels necessary to share: Please do not insult the show or its writers in the comments of my fic. This is not something I find complimentary in the slightest, and every time it happens it makes me feel genuinely terrible and less inclined to participate in fandom. Thanks!


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